Reality check on health care
See? It just proves it!
Today, in the wake of the “historic” bill signed by the “historic” president, the liberal blogosphere has been crowing over the health care bill. I find this disturbing. People are cheering because the bill was resuscitated after its near death and they applaud that the bill went through with enough votes that Democrats didn’t need to rely on parliamentary shenanigans such as reconciliation. Admittedly there are those who acknowledge that the bill has little meat and that it’s basically a symbolic victory. Nonetheless, they are giddy with their success.
Well, Imma glass-half-empty kinda girl.
Hello? The Democrats scraped by tooth and nail to get this bill passed. They made enough concessions that much of the bill was gutted. Insurance stocks soared when the bill passed, right? That can’t be a good sign.
Right now, liberal folks are at once gleeful and indignant that the Tea Baggers Tea Party is showing its racist, homophobic hand. They’ve conveniently forgotten that everyone already already knew the Tea Baggers were racist homophobes and that overt displays of these sentiments are hardly revelatory.
There’s also a lot of Republican post-mortem-ing on both sides of the aisle (Hey! I verbed that noun!) about the failures of right-wing fear mongering and obstructionism. The more sane Republicans are trying to dissociate themselves from the death-panel idiocy to salvage a political strategy beyond threatening violent overthrow of the government. For the right-wing conspiracy theorists, the bill’s success is just more proof that Obama is Hitler and that the liberal left are “ramming” their agenda down the throats of “everyman.”
So I’m not entirely sure why Democrats are ecstatic and I’m concerned that they are suffering the feeling of invincibility and moral rectitude common in cases of GroupThink, which will make them careless and which will bring their downfall.
Yes, it’s a sad state of political affairs when civil discourse gives way to hysteria and paranoia as has been the case of the left under Bush and the Right under Obama. But I think it’s perverse when both ideological camps can point to the passage of a contentious bill as something of a victory — not necessarly a concrete one, but one that confirms their world view of what’s right and wrong. We are so clearly living in alternate realities when both sides point to this “historic moment” as proof that the other side is insane, unjust, and ultimately responsible for the fall of democracy.
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